panish films on the Peninsular War: the reactions of the Administration, critics and audience

Abstract

Franco’s Government was aware of the great advantages of the cinematographic industry as a vector to spread the nationalist ideology and of its high economic value; therefore they made an economic intervention in the industry from 1939 to 1971. This article presents a study of the censorship process on the 17 movies filmed during this period regarding the Peninsular War. As the topic suited the exaltation of national values, 
both the Falange and the Government focused on the films to get their objectives. But the quality of most of these movies greatly disappointed the expectations of the Evaluation Committee, which was in charge of assigning the official economic subventions. As a consequence they overestimated their qualification for the subventions in order to preserve those investments within the national economic cinematographic scheme. Finally, putting aside the relative success from audience and critics and that about one third of the movies were exhibited abroad, the mediocre quality of the films demonstrated that the evaluation procedure turned itself wicked under the behaviour of both the producers and directors. On the other hand, the analysis of these movies allows to go deep in several key aspects of the Francoist policy, economy and society.